Grim has already eaten so many bleak and roach that they are beginning to be everyday fare; and now, there goes a new kind of food, a fish that shines all red and green and blue and black, with large, glittering, beady eyes!
At a distance she follows the tit-bit that swims through the water like no other fish, turning incessantly round and round on its own axis.
How hard it works! there is a bright starry light all round it, and its tail-fin quivers behind in a long thick trail.
She cannot look at it unmoved. “After it!” say her eyes; “after it!” echoes her empty stomach.
She does not succeed in seizing it across as she generally does, but has to swim up and swallow it from behind in one mouthful.
It is a curiously sharp-spined little fish! Now that she has it in her mouth, it is not nearly so tempting to her palate as it was before her eyes. Well, she has taken the trouble to catch it, so down it shall go!
She cannot get it to move in her mouth; it will not stir! She takes a firmer hold, turns with it, and hastens back into her hiding place.
Then it begins to bite her in the throat! And now--she becomes quite uneasy--her throat suddenly tries to go the opposite way to her tail! What can be the matter?
She forcibly sets her teeth into her refractory captive, when suddenly she is pulled over.
How strange! The simple little pearly fish takes the form of a master, and drags her after it through the water; no matter how much she tries to back, no matter what powerful strokes she makes to force it to obey her will, she is obliged to yield and go with it. Her brain is bursting; she cannot comprehend this powerlessness: the fish is in her mouth and on its way down her throat, and yet it is dragging her along with it.